A Phantom Cannot Live by Pate Alone…

Tell me folks – am I being really outré here? The last few times I’ve dined out someone or other in my party has ordered the paté. Is there some trendy thing whereby eating bread/toast with paté is out of fashion?

Every time there has been little or no bread-like-substance upon which to put the paste, leaving my pals with the conundrum of how to use a knife and fork to eat something the consistency of Brie (amusing for me, but less so for them). In Greenwich this trend has been manifested in the last couple of weeks at 16″ West – a couple of teeny bits of toast that would have had to have blocks of paté the size of Wales on each of them to get through it all – and the Rivington – absolutely nothing whatsoever to put the meat paste on – though they are by no means the only culprits, just the ones I’ve most recently witnessed.

Am I being really out-with-the-times here? Surely bread is the cheapest bit of the meal and it would seem in the interests of the restaurateur to provide enough to eat something soft and gooey with? Or maybe it’s a cunning plan to make sure you’re still hungry at the end of the meal and order cheese (with not enough crackers)?

This entry was posted on Friday, October 21st, 2011 at 12:04 pm and is filed under Food and Drink. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

10 Comments to “A Phantom Cannot Live by Pate Alone…”

Theyre not trying to be shifty and make you buy bread as extra are they?

I never get that with some up-market restaurants who have on their menu an apparently half complete dish that is void of a vegetable (Like, for instance lamb cutlets with mashed potato – wheres the bit of green??)so you simply must purchase one of their ‘optional’ sides just to make your dish complete and balanced!

I heard from someone who heard from a mate, who probably heard from someone who actually cared about such things, that it was poor form to put pate on bread. Apparently the bread is only even an accompaniment, and not designed for spreading pate on..apparently..

I’m reminded of an American guest I took to the Trafalgar a couple of years ago. ‘What’s Pate?’ (she pronounced it payt). When I explained she threw her hands up in horror ‘just give me the fries’. But when the thick-cut chips arrived she was equally disdainful: ‘that ain’t a fry – it’s a log’.

Aaaah don’t get me started on bread and restaurant. I thought I was turning into a raving lunatic but I see that I am not alone. Reataurant owners have started to charge for bread, I was told that bread is not in the Brit. culture so it follows that one has to pay extra…oooh cringe. how do they expect us to eat their pate?